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Nod was the first DJ ever to broadcast on Radio Caroline, the first pirate radio station in the world.
So Nik Turner, who played saxophone and sang, came over to me and said in very important tones, ‘Make some noises in E. This is called “You Shouldn’t Do That”,’ and walked off again. I mean, that’s a lot of fucking information, isn’t it?
He named it after that terrible plane, the F-104 Starfighter, which the Americans foisted on to Germany. There was a joke going round Germany at the time: ‘Do you want to buy a Starfighter? Buy an acre of ground and wait,’ ’cause they were crashing all over Europe.
Hawkwind was inspired by him – the name comes from Moorcock’s Hawkmoon series of books.
And remember that long box thing when CDs first came out? What the fuck was that anyway? The CD was only half the size of the box, and you couldn’t open the fucking thing up to get your CD out. You had to use a carving knife and you’d wind up cracking the jewel case and putting scratches all over it. And it took ages to persuade them to get rid of that long box.
As a matter of fact, it was in Los Angeles I wrote my last song for Hawkwind. It was ‘Motorhead’.
We were a blues band, really. Although we played it at a thousand miles an hour, it was recognizable as blues – at least to us it was; probably it wasn’t to anybody else.
That was when I came up with the famous quote that first appeared in Sounds: ‘It’ll be the dirtiest rock ’n’ roll band in the world. If we moved in next door your lawn would die!’ Actually, I stole that line from Dr Hook, but it quickly became the first of Motörhead’s many catchphrases.
Larry thought it would be good to have Phil sing on one track, so we tried him out on ‘City Kids’. It didn’t work – he sounded like two cats being stapled together.
In America, the Damned were never more than a good-sized cult band, but in England they were much more famous. They were the true punk band, not the Sex Pistols. The Pistols were a great rock ’n’ roll band, but really that’s all they were.
actually gave Sid Vicious some bass lessons – he came up to me and said, ‘Hey, Lemmy, teach me how to play bass,’ and I said, ‘All right, Sid.’ But after three days I had to tell him, ‘Sid, you can’t play bass.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I know,’ and he was all depressed and went off.
Finland in the summer is fucking hot with loads of little mosquitoes flying around, not the frozen place it becomes in the dead of winter. And there was no booze in there, either – horrors!
He had diabetes, of which he later died. It’s just an ongoing thing – the nice guys always go. That’s why I’m still around.
Those were good times; we were winning, and we were younger, and we believed it. The older you get, the less you can believe. It’s not your fault, you know. It just comes to you that everything isn’t corn flakes and skittles and beer. It’s a jungle out there. But I never cared about it when I was young.
but he knew what kids want to see: kids want to see grown-ups fuck themselves over, you know; they love that shit.
There were some fire-eating strippers there – all good, wholesome English fun.
We were going to do a book called Hospitals I Have Known Across Europe, by Phil Taylor – a guide to European emergency rooms, you know. He’s not real graceful, you see.
Jesse Owens came home, covered in glory and eight medals after showing Hitler the benefits of democracy and a multi-racial society, and they wouldn’t serve him dinner in a restaurant in his own town. What the fuck is that? That kind of double standard is what really pisses me off.
Things like that don’t bother me at all – you just have to keep going and everything will sort itself out. It always does. You can’t run around panicking and giving up; you’ve got to have the strength of your convictions; you’ve got to know that somebody out there is going to recognize you as worthwhile and that you’ll still be in the picture. If you look like you’re beaten, then who’s going to come forward?
Fuck this ‘Don’t speak ill of the dead’ shit! People don’t become better when they’re dead; you just talk about them as if they are. But it’s not true! People are still assholes, they’re just dead assholes!
In my life so far, I have discovered that there are really only two kinds of people: those who are for you, and those who are against you. Learn to recognize them, for they are often and easily mistaken for each other.
Inherited hatred (i.e. hatred your parents schooled you in) is not only stupid, it is destructive – why make your only driving force hate? Seems really fucking dumb to me.
